Joe Gerics cheers as other supporters celebrate a victory for Vicki Tesoro, the Democratic candidate for Trumbull First Selectman. Trumbull voters opted for a change of party leadership in town, electing a Democrat to replace outgoing Republican First Selectman Tim Herbst. less

Joe Gerics cheers as other supporters celebrate a victory for Vicki Tesoro, the Democratic candidate for Trumbull First Selectman. Trumbull voters opted for a change of party leadership in town, electing a ... more

A supporter of democratic RTM candidate Heather Dean campaigns side by side with Republican State Sen. Tony Hwang and Republican RTM candidate Alex Durrell, far right. Republicans in Fairfield were looking for answers as Democrats celebrated taking the majority on the Representative Town Meeting in Tuesday's election. less

A supporter of democratic RTM candidate Heather Dean campaigns side by side with Republican State Sen. Tony Hwang and Republican RTM candidate Alex Durrell, far right. Republicans in Fairfield were looking for ... more

Jim Shrive of Greenwich walks past a line of campaign signs as he leaves the District 3 polling place after voting at Western Middle School in the Byram section of Greenwich, Conn., Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017.

Jim Shrive of Greenwich walks past a line of campaign signs as he leaves the District 3 polling place after voting at Western Middle School in the Byram section of Greenwich, Conn., Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017.

Connecticut voters defied the adage that all politics is local in Tuesday’s municipal elections, favoring Democrats in key races across the state in what insiders on both the left and right interpreted as a repudiation of Donald Trump.

Republicans lost their grip on 22 municipalities under their control, while flipping seven blue communities red. That’s a net loss of 15 cities and towns for the GOP, which two years ago was the party in power in about 97 of the state’s 169 municipalities.

The number includes town councils that act as a de facto first selectman or mayor. Trumbull and Newtown, where the GOP incumbents Tim Herbst and Pat Llodra did not seek re-election, went Democrat.

GOP candidates in traditional Republican strongholds such as New Canaan and Greenwich further underperformed historic benchmarks. And in Fairfield, Republicans lost control of the Representative Town Meeting.

The surge of grassroots opposition to Trump had a sobering effect on local Republican leaders, some of whom acknowledged the president was a drag on the party’s candidates.

It mirrored the results in gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, where Democrats prevailed. Heading into the 2018 midterm election and governor’s race, some in the GOP said, that’s a troubling trend.

“At the end of the day, Trump was definitely a factor,” said Jamie Millington, Fairfield’s Republican Town Committee chairman. “We understand there are many people that are upset with Donald Trump. There’s nothing on the local level we can do about it. Federal politics will be what they are.”

A number of GOP stalwarts reported weaker turnout by the party’s base. Republicans make up the smallest bloc of the electorate in Connecticut after unaffiliated voters and Democrats, who say they have been waiting an entire year for redemption after Trump’s election.

“I think probably the night Trump won, I decided we need to do something and get involved,” said Ashley Gaudiano, a first-time Democratic candidate for the Town Council in Trumbull who was victorious.

It was a banner night for Democrats in Trumbull, who put Vicki Tesoro into office as first selectman after eight years of GOP rule under Herbst. The incumbent opted to forgo running for re-election to focus on his bid for governor.

The pendulum also swung on the Town Council, going from a 15 to 6 GOP majority to an 11 to 10 edge for Democrats.

Like many newcomers to local politics, Gaudiano, 30, traveled to Washington, D.C., in January to participate in the Women’s March. She is on the national board of RISE Stronger, a Trump resistance group. She is also a member of the Action Together Network, another organization borne out of last year’s presidential race.

Connecticut’s top Republican rejected the idea that his party’s candidates were swept away by what one Fairfield GOP stalwart termed as the “Trump tsunami,” however.

“I know Democrats want to pretend this is about a national narrative,” said J.R. Romano, the state GOP chairman. “It seems as though in wealthier towns where people don’t care about taxes going up, Democrats were able to rally their base. But in towns that are struggling like Derby and Norwich, Republicans won handily.”

Romano is a native of Derby, where incumbent Democrat Anita Dugatto was upset by Republican Richard “Zeke” Dziekan in the mayor’s race. The smallest city in Connecticut, population 12,903, Derby is in the heart of the Naugatuck Valley, the industrial spine of the state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump last year.

Victories by Republicans Mark Boughton and Erin Stewart in the Danbury and New Britain mayors’ races were a source of bragging rights for Romano, who said the GOP held onto the mayor’s office in Stratford.

“Every town is different,” Romano said. “How could you argue in Fairfield it’s a tsunami, but in Stratford it wasn’t?”

State Democratic Chairman Nick Balletto relished the pick-ups by his party, which he said has been deluged with new activists in the past year.

“It’s people that were angry,” Balletto said. “It’s people that wanted to make a difference after (last November). It was across the board, places that no one saw coming. It’s just amazing.”

In Greenwich, a Republican stronghold for decades that is the boyhood home of George H.W. Bush, Democrats appeared poised to take control of the Board of Estimate and Taxation and oust incumbent GOP Tax Collector Tod Laudonia.

A record number of candidates ran for seats on the 230-member Representative Town Meeting, the nonpartisan citizen legislature. A host of them were newcomers and women, who answered the call to action by Trump resistance groups such as Indivisible.

“I think it woke a lot of people up, last year’s election,” said Jennie Baird, a RTM newcomer from Riverside. “What I think happened yesterday was a referendum against divisiveness.”

Baird is not a member of Indivisible, but spoke at the group’s recruitment meeting for local candidates earlier this year.

“I don’t think anybody ran for the RTM thinking they were going to get Trump out of office or that they were going to change the tax code,” Baird said. “If you’re not paying attention in your own backyard, you’re giving up your right to complain about anything.”

Baird attributed the inroads made by Democrats in Greenwich to the support of unaffiliated voters, who make up the largest bloc of the electorate in town. While the Democratic candidate for first selectman, Sandy Litvack, was defeated by GOP incumbent Peter Tesei, the margin was 53 to 47 percent, not the 75 percent mandate Tesei has enjoyed in previous elections.

In New Canaan, the only town in the entire state where the majority of voters are Republicans, the GOP’s first selectman candidate Kevin Moynihan won by 33 votes.

“My sense is that the anti-Trumpers were very energized just to go against Republicans, and I think that’s a good lesson for us all to learn, and I think we all have to be more energized,” said Edward Dadakis, a Republican State Central Committee member for Greenwich, New Canaan and Stamford. “I think they’re motivated and we’ve got to get equally motivated.”

Jerold Duquette, an associate professor of political science at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, said Tuesday’s results don’t bode well for Republicans as the midterm elections approach. Historically, the president’s party loses momentum half-way into his term, he said.

“The scale of President Trump’s unpopularity is virtually unprecedented,” Duquette said. “There seems to be a great deal of grassroots mobilization on the left and among Democrats that has been overtly and clearly generated as a result of the anti-Trump movement.”

Duquette said that the trend of middle-class voters gravitating toward Republicans and wealthier suburbanites swinging toward Democrats is consistent with last year’s presidential election results.

“It fits with the emerging consensus on the new sort of Trump Republican coalition,” Duquette said. “The idea that (blue-collar) white voters have gravitated toward the Republican Party is quickly becoming a consensus notion. It makes complete sense that there would be a cosmopolitan voter reaction, and this would be the first opportunity to road test that reaction.”